Thryv Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2023 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Thryv Holdings Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Thank you. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Cameron Lessard, Head of IR to begin the conference. Cameron, over to you.

Thank you, operator. Hello, and good day to everyone and welcome to Thryv's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today are Joe Walsh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Rouse, Chief Financial Officer; and Grant Freeman, President. A copy of our earnings press release and investor presentation can be found on our website at thryv.com or in the Investor Section at investor.thryv.com. Please acknowledge comments made on today's call and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements about the operations and future results of the Company. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Thryv has no obligation to update the information presented on the conference call. Finally, our speakers will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe will provide useful information for investors. Reconciliation of those measures to GAAP will be posted on our website. With that introduction, I would like to turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Joe Walsh.

Good morning, Cameron, and thank you all for joining us on the call today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results. 2023 was a stellar year for Thryv, and we capped it off with an incredible fourth quarter that once again exceeded our expectations. For the full year 2023, we delivered SaaS revenue of $264 million, up 22% year-over-year with SaaS adjusted EBITDA of $12 million, which represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of 5%, because when we started the year we were projecting somewhere around breakeven for our SaaS business. We've more than delivered on that objective. And for the quarter, we're really happy to announce two notable improvements in our SaaS metrics. SaaS adjusted gross margins improved to 70% in the fourth quarter. Our gross margins have been trending towards the 75% that we guided in our long-term guidance. And it's really a function of us having built out our platform. We've got more to go, but we're able to sell multiple centers out of existing customers. And so you end up with a lot better gross margins. So that's a trend that we think we'll see continuing. Next data I wanted to mention was net dollar retention; we came in at 96% for the fourth quarter. And again, that has to do with us selling additional centers to existing customers who previously only had one center and there just wasn't a lot else to sell them. We have some small add-ons, but now that we're building out more centers with another one coming later this year, we expect net dollar retention to continue trending toward that 100% that we've given our long-term guidance. We generated $148 million of cash from operations and free cash flow of $115 million, which was very similar to the prior year even after accounting for the print revenue recognition dynamic in the third quarter and our acquisition of Yellow New Zealand which occurred in the second quarter. This allowed us to retire a significant amount of debt in 2023. Later in this call, Paul will delve into our impressive fourth quarter and full year results. However, I wish to direct everyone's attention to the press release we issued alongside our earnings results this morning. For those familiar with our company on this call, you are well aware of our ongoing multiyear transformation. We're shifting from a massive marketing services entity, selling both digital and print products to small and medium-sized businesses, to a rapidly expanding and innovative SaaS powerhouse catering to the same client base. Our unparalleled advantage lies in the strategic selling of our SaaS products directly into the client base within our marketing services business. We refer to it as the zoo, with our recent product launches notably Marketing Center and Command Center. I'm excited to share today that we're seeing an acceleration of clients coming from Brazil into the SaaS platform. As we journey along the digital transformation, we're excited to share an update on our ongoing initiative to transition marketing services clients to the powerhouse Thryv platform. This isn't a sudden shift or anything new, but the next natural step and a decade-long commitment to equipping small businesses with the best tools for success. This will be a significant growth lever for the company in 2024. And I'm delighted to welcome our President Grant Freeman to provide a more in-depth commentary on the transformative process.

Thanks Joe, and good morning, everyone. As Joe mentioned earlier, we issued a press release this morning detailing our legacy client upgrade plans for 2024. Since you may not have had a chance to review it yet, I'll provide a brief overview and address any questions during the Q&A portion to follow. With our Thryv platform, including business center and the recent introduction of Marketing Center and Command Center, we are aligned with our vision for growth in the SaaS business. By strategically expanding our platform into areas that complement our existing services, we're capitalizing on product adjacency opportunities. Specifically, our new offerings seamlessly integrate with our legacy products into the SaaS platform, creating a natural progression for our clients. As a result, we anticipate a slight acceleration in the decline of billings from marketing services as clients naturally transition to the SaaS platform, attracted by the enhanced features and capabilities that it provides. For eight years, we've been actively engaging with our marketing services clients to encourage them to modernize and adopt our award-winning Thryv platform as an upgrade to their existing services. Thryv will continue to upgrade our clients to our platform as we execute our planned migration away from legacy digital products and services. We've been converting many of our legacy customers to Business Center, a software product designed to help SMBs manage and organize their business, generate invoices, run social campaigns, manage listings, and send estimates, among many more important elements of running their business. Many of our Business Center clients opt to keep the marketing services products because they consistently rely on them to generate low-cost, high-converting business leads, which they find extremely valuable. This underscores the positive interconnection between SaaS and marketing services usage among our clients. Our dedication to client success isn't limited to introducing new offerings like Marketing Center, Command Center, ThryvPay, et cetera. It's a move that unlocks NDR expansion. These offerings are not cosmetic enhancements; they serve as catalysts for growth. By simplifying client upgrades and providing enhanced value propositions, we've established a virtuous cycle. Clients gain access to expanded solutions fueling their success while also generating predictable recurring revenue streams for us. This mutual benefit isn't a one-time occurrence. It's a symbiotic relationship that lays the groundwork for sustained growth and partnerships. As small businesses, Thryv and grow, they naturally use more of our platform capabilities. Now to support our growth, we will streamline operations, reduce complexity and create efficiencies around our legacy digital systems. We've been upgrading our long-standing clients to our award-winning platform at no additional cost to them in some instances. We have also observed clients who have increased their spend on the platform. We’re eager for them to explore, utilize, and grow into various modules of the platform to empower their businesses. While many of our legacy digital products deliver value, they simply aren't receiving investment or further development. We are investing in our platform, our existing centers, and have plans for new rollouts in 2024 and beyond. By upgrading clients to our Thryv platform, we provide the same value they currently receive plus numerous additional features to help them solve more problems today while also offering the opportunity to address future challenges through the addition of new centers. Our Marketing Services revenue is declining every year in the range of 20%. We are being proactive in retaining clients for the long-term by offering them a viable product, a software platform that prepares them for the future. Upgrading them to our platform can address their current and future needs. Every client being upgraded also receives our unique Command Center, which helps them tackle the universal problem faced by SMBs, which is effective and efficient communication with customers, prospects, and their internal team members. In sum, our client upgrade plans for 2024 underscore our commitment to growth in the SaaS business. With the introduction of the Marketing Center and Command Center, we're not just evolving; we're revolutionizing our approach by seamlessly integrating new offerings to enhance client experiences and Thryv's sustained success. In addition, we're excited about the role of Thryv Command Center as a freemium offering and what new opportunity it provides. By offering Command Center to the businesses and developing the usage of their free center, we're building a blue ocean of freemium users who are benefiting from our platform. This allows the Company to target those freemium users who begin to activate and become hand raisers, allowing the company to offer these users paid centers to solve additional problems on our Thryv platform. So with that, I'll now turn it over to our CFO, Paul Rouse, to discuss our fourth quarter and full year financial results. Paul?

Thanks, Grant. As a reminder to listeners, we are going to focus on two segments: SaaS and marketing services, which includes results for both domestic and international operations. Additional detail between domestic and international for each segment can be found in the appendix section of our investor presentation. Let's dive into our results, beginning with our SaaS segment. SaaS revenue was $74 million in the fourth quarter ahead of our guidance, representing an increase of 25% year-on-year and 10% sequentially. Full-year SaaS revenue grew 22% to $263.7 million. Moving on to profitability improvements for the quarter, SaaS adjusted gross margin increased 690 basis points year-over-year and 310 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 69.7%. Full-year SaaS adjusted gross margin expanded to 66.6%, an increase of 300 basis points from the prior year. A year-over-year improvement in SaaS adjusted gross margin was driven primarily by two factors: a favorable mix shift in revenue towards our higher margin subscription-based centers and cost efficiencies delivered in the quarter related to fulfillment. We expect to see continued expansion in this metric moving forward. We reported notable improvement in SaaS adjusted EBITDA in 2023, which significantly exceeded our guidance to close out the year. Fourth quarter SaaS adjusted EBITDA was $6.5 million, significantly exceeding our guidance range of $3.5 million to $4 million and resulting in a SaaS adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.8%. Full-year SaaS adjusted EBITDA was $12 million, resulting in a SaaS adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.6%. EBITDA margin improvement was directly attributable to the aforementioned improvement in our adjusted gross margin, as well as continued reliance on low cash conversion out of our marketing services installed base of customers. As previously discussed, we've undertaken a detailed analysis of our inbound acquisition channel, focusing on investment allocation and ideal client selection. This rigorous approach has yielded significant outcomes, not only enhancing efficiency but also unlocking operating leverage through optimized sales costs, prioritizing high value clients with strong potential while minimizing upfront sales investment. This laser focus drives sustainable growth by maximizing ROI and fostering enduring relationships with our ideal customers. We are confident that our new Command Center, empowering clients with self-service and insights, will serve as a future acquisition driver, attracting new customers and strengthening existing ones. SaaS subscribers were approximately 66,000 at the end of the fourth quarter, an increase of 27% year-over-year. SaaS RPU edged higher sequentially to $370, a decrease of 4% year-over-year. As previously mentioned in the prior quarter, our adoption of a new multi-center PLG strategy has led to new system SaaS subscribers signing up for lower introductory packages compared to our current average RPU, thus contributing to the year-over-year decline. Fourth quarter net dollar retention was 96%, an increase of 500 basis points year-over-year and 400 basis points sequentially. Our enhancement in net dollar retention directly correlates with our upselling and cross-selling initiatives. Historically, our company primarily focuses on selling one business center. However, with the introduction of additional centers and products such as Marketing Center, Command Center, and Product Add, we are now witnessing the positive outcomes of diversifying our offerings expected in the expansion of our NDR. Our intensified efforts in upselling and cross-selling are yielding these significant results. Moving over to marketing services: Fourth quarter revenue was $162.2 million, above the midpoint of our guidance. Full-year marketing services revenue was $653.2 million, also above the midpoint of our guidance. Fourth quarter marketing services adjusted EBITDA was $45.8 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 28%. Full-year marketing services adjusted EBITDA was $175.5 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 27%. Fourth quarter marketing services billings were $149.2 million, representing a decline of 23% year-over-year. Our billings exceeded internal models in recent quarters; however, this decline rate aligns with our long-term vision. The introduction of Marketing Center aligns perfectly with our vision for sustained growth in the SaaS business as there is a clear product adjacency fit. Therefore, we would expect marketing services billings decline to increase given the natural upgrade to the SaaS platform. While it represents a higher value proposition for legacy clients leading to increased adoption and retention, it also delivers improved gross margins compared to traditional marketing services products. This win-win approach ensures long-term success for both clients and our SaaS business. Fourth quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin was 70%. Full-year consolidated adjusted gross margin was 67%. Fourth quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $52.3 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 22%. For the full year, our consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $187.5 million, which represented an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20%. We recorded a non-cash impairment charge to goodwill in the amount of $268.8 million or $7.71 per diluted share, once again attributable to the structural decline in our marketing services business. Net loss was $257.5 million or a loss of $7.39 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2023 and compares to a net loss of $50.4 million or a loss of $1.47 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2022. Finally, our net debt position was $340 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Our leverage ratio was 1.8 times net debt to EBITDA, which is well below our covenant of three times. The company generated an additional $34 million in free cash flow for the fourth quarter and used $25 million to pay down our term loan. We made $120 million in term loan debt retirement in 2023, which was ahead of plan. Now let's discuss guidance for the first quarter and full year 2024. For the first quarter, we expect SaaS revenue in the range of $73 million to $74 million. For the full year, we expect SaaS revenue in the range of $325 million to $328 million, which implies SaaS revenue growth of 23% to 24%. For the first quarter, we expect SaaS adjusted EBITDA in the range of $6 million to $7 million. For the full year, we expect SaaS adjusted EBITDA in the range of $26 million to $29 million, which implies SaaS adjusted EBITDA margin of 8% to 9%. For the first quarter, we expect marketing services revenue in the range of $152 million to $155 million. For the full year, we expect marketing services revenue in the range of $495 million to $505 million. For the full year, we expect marketing services adjusted EBITDA in the range of $132 million to $135 million. I'll now turn the call back over to Joe.

Thanks, Paul. I'd like to comment on the net dollar retention improvements. There will probably be a little bit of noise in that number as we move along because we've introduced the product-led growth motion, and that is, in some cases, introducing customers at a little bit lower price points. We believe this will improve our net dollar retention number over time. Also, some of the conversions or some of the customers coming from the marketing services space have come over on promotional pricing, which represents an opportunity for rate increases in the future, which will be great. But that's just introducing a little bit of noise into our ARPU number. Before anybody gets too worried about our ARPU number, I wanted to just highlight that we've studied season ARPU looking at people who have been with us for at least a year, and we're increasing seasoned ARPU in the mid-teens. Once somebody is with us and settled in, we see strong ARPU growth, which, of course, is what's driving the net dollar retention improvement. So, all I'm saying is just watch out for a little noise in ARPU as we bring in mass numbers of new customers, some of which have different price points. I'd like to comment on our legacy client upgrade. If you came to invest in the phone book business, it's not bad news for us. We are rapidly building the SaaS business and now we've got more business lead-generating tools for getting a lot better traction into that legacy base, and I'm really excited to see how this is happening; Marketing Center has been a real key in what's driving that. I wanted to just wrap up today's call by talking about EBITDA. This is a business that has had big EBITDA, but it's been declining for a very long time. We are finally showing up at the place where we're reaching the nadir of the low point in that EBITDA, and that's because the SaaS business is now profitable, and SaaS EBITDA is growing quite quickly. As we look at the total EBITDA that the company generates, we are reaching the point where we’re stopping the decline, shifting the source of EBITDA from the legacy marketing services to the SaaS business. We expect that the SaaS business will be approximately 40% of the company's revenue this year, and looking ahead to the next year, we're expecting to reach parity, coming out of that with the SaaS business being the larger chunk of our business. It has good margins and the potential to really carry the EBITDA load. I wanted to comment quickly on international. International is going really well for us. Our activity in Canada is making good progress. Our international leaders are looking at taking us into more markets. The last several years, EBITDA has been a drag out of international, but as Australia is now reaching profitability, as we look forward, international will stop being a drag and begin to contribute, especially as we look into 2025 and beyond. So, when you think about EBITDA sources and minuses, that goes from having been a minus to being neutral this year and to being positive in the future. We're pretty excited about our international business and how that's going. I'm going to wind up just by saying this journey has been significant. I'm coming up on my 10th anniversary here at what used to be Dex and is now Thryv. We set out a pretty ambitious agenda to take this big legacy media business and transform it into a fast-growing SaaS business. We're now a few quarters away from that being the predominant source of revenue and being very profitable as we drive forward. We're excited about that, and we believe that now it's visible to everyone. It was hard for people to see a couple of years ago, but it’s pretty easy to see now. Thank you for your support. We really appreciate our investors who had the vision to stick with us and see this unfold; I think you're going to be rewarded. So, with that, I'm going to wrap up and turn it back to the operator.

Thank you. We are now opening the floor for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Arjun Bhatia from William Blair. Your line is open.

Perfect. Thank you, guys. I appreciate all the color and nice job on Q4 here. Joe, if I can touch on the transitions and upgrade plans that you've laid out a little bit, how should we think about maybe handicapping how many of the marketing services customers will migrate over or will upgrade versus some that may or may not? And what are you kind of incorporating into the guidance for that? And maybe as a follow-on to that, when customers do move out or do you anticipate they're going to buy a Business Center, Marketing Center? Or is it going to be a little bit of all of the above?

So those are two great questions. They really get to the core of what we're looking at for the next couple of years. If you’ll permit me, let's back up a little and think about the bigger picture. By February of 2024, let's look ahead to the latter part of the decade, by 2029 or 2030, virtually every business will be using cloud tools. Today, many of them are still using unplanned systems, such as spreadsheets and manual methods. They require help transitioning. We think we're well-positioned to lead them to our SaaS tools because we have a trusted relationship with them and the top-tier software focused on ease of use. We're confident many of our existing clients will transition to cloud-based solutions with us rather than going elsewhere. Our customer referrals are growing as we're proving our success. We anticipate that many who have been with us for over 15 years will make the cloud transition with us. This transition may not happen immediately; it's an unfolding trend that takes time, often showing slow growth that can suddenly accelerate. So that’s my answer to your question about future migration rates. Regarding your second question on customer purchases, we've found that customers migrating to Business Center take a little longer to transition than those moving to Marketing Center. The Marketing Center was formerly similar to their legacy marketing services. Many of our customers who have been satisfied using legacy marketing services have quickly adopted Marketing Center. It's growing rapidly and catching up with Business Center. Those are the answers to your questions. Did I address what you wanted?

Yes, that's super helpful. And actually just kind of dovetailing off of that because I think that this transition certainly makes sense or is kind of inevitable; anyway, it's right. And but when you're thinking of how to run the business through this process, how are you thinking about internal resource allocation? Because one of the obviously potential and likely outcomes of that is that this drives a host of transition, and you're onboarding customers to get them ramped up on the product and to even start the cross-sell motion at some point. Right internally? But do you have the resources set for that? Or is that something that maybe an incremental investment we should expect as you continue growing the SaaS business?

That’s another excellent question. We’ve been doing what you described; transitioning our process throughout the last year. If you remember, we brought Marketing Center along slowly in Q1 and Q2 of last year, and really hit stride in the summer. Until then, we gated the sales force to ensure we didn't churn customers. We wanted to ensure a successful rollout before allowing broader access to the sales force. If you go back to Q3 of last year, you saw a strong acceleration in subscriber adds that was us really institutionalizing our process.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the solid Q4 results here. I was hoping to maybe add to a question towards Grant in terms of this transition process within that legacy marketing services base. Can you talk about, has there been any sort of change in terms of incentives that are offered to some of these legacy customers or the approach to really accelerate that jump over to either Marketing Center or Business Center?

Yes, good morning, Zach. That's a great question. We've been laser-focused on ensuring that we still provide a value that's commensurate with what they were receiving on the digital marketing services side, while also emphasizing access to the additional tools from our modern and invested platform. In terms of bringing customers across, we are still generating value oriented toward leads or exposure similar to the old services while providing more modern technology, in many cases at no additional costs. This also increases their engagement in the platform. When clients transition from passive digital marketing services to Marketing Center, they understand attribution and the return on investment far better. It's important for us to deliver the same value as before while adding more.

Yes, extremely helpful. Thanks for that, Grant. And Joe, just one question for me around just the number of SaaS subscribers. You had the big jump up in Q3, and it seems well-strong growth year-over-year in Q4, essentially pretty similar from Q3 to Q4. Can you talk about any moving parts around that metric and kind of what played out in Q4 for that SaaS subscriber metric?

Yes, I mean, it's actually a pretty natural process. Our customers are seeing value in—Grant said it beautifully—adding analytics and diagnostic tools, and we are allowing them to do this for little to no additional investment. We're moving them over, which will set up the opportunity for us. You'll probably see some rise in retention rates in the next couple of years due to this upgrade path, which can be observed in our growth figures. This transition allows us to reduce or eliminate investments in some of the older platforms as people move over. Looking forward, we anticipate our sales force is comfortable telling the product story. Now that the product is performing well, we expect increased growth moving forward.

Great! Thanks guys. Good morning. I appreciate it. Joe, I appreciated the color that you gave around some of the RPU trends and the fact that newer customers are coming in at promotional pricing. Can you talk a little bit about how we should think about customer growth versus ARPU in 2024? While there is some pressure on those new customers, this season ARPU numbers are actually really nice. I just wanted to understand how you guys are thinking about that. And then I just had a quick follow-up.

Yeah, you got everything rolling exactly right. We broke out the seasoned ARPU to ensure you were comfortable that the customers we have in our base currently while our spending is growing even if the ARPU number gets noisy because of some of the conversions coming through. Two major trends will shake up the ARPU number: one, customers moving over at lower price points in some cases. This adds a layer of noise but should be good for future growth. The second factor includes product-led growth where Command Center customers can discover the product on their own and can opt for upgrades after showing usage.

Great! That's really helpful detail. Thanks, Joe. One follow-up, I would love to hear your perspective. I mean, you mentioned your 10-year anniversary here. Obviously, looking back, it’s been tremendous progress in transforming into a SaaS company. Just in that context, I wanted to get your thoughts on M&A because on the one hand, you’ve proven that acquiring these businesses globally is a core competency, and you're really hitting the knee of the curve on that. On the other hand, buying more of those companies could further push out the transition point to becoming a SaaS company. I would love to hear how you're thinking about that particularly in light of the SaaS momentum you're currently experiencing.

It's a really good and complex question. We've successfully added customers to the zoo and converted them. But at the end of that process or nearing the end, there aren't many of these left. We look forward to SaaS acquisitions, but our current valuation makes significant SaaS acquisitions challenging. This dynamic will change in the near future. For the moment, we need to be cautious here. We also have a less-than-ideal credit facility, which we'll swap out at some point, providing much needed flexibility. Regarding the transition point of SaaS revenue versus waiting for the crossover, we monitor this closely. Our successful prior acquisitions give us confidence that that crossover point is not a concern, whether it's six quarters or a year away. Investors should look at our holistic growth trajectory moving forward.

And your final question today is from the line of Richard Francis. Your line is open. That brings our Q&A session to a close. Thank you to our speakers for today's presentation and thank you all for joining us. This concludes today's conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.